"Rustam Lassos Rakhsh," Folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Firdausi

Rustam Lassos Rakhsh

Rustam, while still a boy, had already distinguished himself in battle. Now it became time to have a steed on his own, worthy of him in strength and courage. Rakhsh, a strawberry roan, was the only horse in the herd that met these standards and the two became lifelong partners. Here, the artist has carelessly portrayed the hero as a mature man with a beard and mustache, and has also provided him with the tiger-skin cuirass that later became his halmark, but not as yet at this stage of his young life. The chief of the royal stud, wearing a typical Mongol hat, carries a nachakh, a kind of weapon. The prunus and pine trees are inspired by Chinese painting.

This scene in both the First and Second Small Shahnamas, in which the horses of the herd are depicted galloping wildly, is among the most effective compositions in those manuscripts.[1] In the 1333 Inju'id epic in St. Petersburg, the youthful-looking Rustam pushes down on a horse's back to test its strength, Rakhsh stands behind him, and the mounted stud "manager," wearing a hat and holding a "club" (nachakh), is similar to that figure in our manuscript.[2]

Mary Lukens Swietochowski in [Swietochowski and Carboni 1994]

Footnotes:

1. Simpson, M. S. The Illustration of an Epic; The Earliest Shahnama Manuscripts. New York, 1979, nos. 87, 88.

2. Adamova, A.T. and L. T. Giuzal'ian. Miniatiury rukopisi poemy "Shakhname" 1333 goda. St. Petersburg, 1985, no. 7.

Ph. Walter Schulz, Leipzig, Germany (by 1914); Professor O. Moll, Düsseldorf, Germany ; Monroe C. Gutman, New York (by 1929–d. 1974; bequeathed to MMA)

New York. The Hagop Kevorkian Special Exhibitions Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Illustrated Poetry and Epic Images: Persian Painting of the 1330s and 1340s," February 1–May 1, 1994, no. 12.

New York. The Hagop Kevorkian Special Exhibitions Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Riding Across Central Asia: Images of the Mongolian Horse in Islamic Art," April 26–November 12, 2000, no catalogue.

Schulz, Ph. Walter. Die Persisch-Islamische Miniaturmalerei. Vol. vols. I, II. Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1914. vol. 1, p. 14, ill. vol. 2, pl. 14 (color).

Harari, Ralph, and Richard Ettinghausen. A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present, edited by Arthur Upham Pope. vol. I–VI. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1938. ill. vol. V, pl. 832B (b/w).

Masuya, Tomoko. "The Condition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Small Shahnama and the Reconstruction of its Text." In Poetry and Epic Images, edited by Marie Lukens Swietochowski, and Stefano Carboni. New York, 1994. pp. 129–45.

Swietochowski, Marie, Stefano Carboni, Tomoko Masuya, and Alexander H. Morton. Illustrated Poetry and Epic Images : Persian Painting of the 1330s and 1340s. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994. no. 12, pp. 72, 79, 88, ill. p. 88 (color).